Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute on this Bill. Sinn Féin has submitted a number of amendments. I will focus on one for the moment, which reads: "Require regulations made under the Acts to require the approval of the Houses of the Oireachtas or, where urgent, the Joint Committee on Health, with approval of the Houses following as soon as possible." What member of a democratically elected Government would have a problem with that? Accountability and oversight are compatible with good government and good governance. Without our amendments being accepted, we cannot support the mechanism and method of how these measures are being introduced and implemented.

Consistently, there has been an appalling lack of consultation by the Government with relevant stakeholders, most recently school principals, parents and GPs regarding face masks and children. There has never been a greater example of "We have tried nothing and we are all out of ideas" when it comes to this Government, schools and managing Covid. For a Government that has so many well-paid advisers, the communications concerning Covid have been consistently mind-boggling. This has caused confusion and created a vacuum where misinformation was given the oxygen to spread. That is unforgivable. The Government had an opportunity to bring people with it, but not only did it miss that opportunity, it ignored it completely.

The Government gave itself a week to make the decision on face masks for kids and then gave schools 16 hours to communicate it and enforce it with a hard-line attitude that we have not even seen in operation in the Dáil at times. The guidelines issued take no consideration of so many factors that it is difficult to know where to begin, but I will start with this one. A medical certificate must be provided to the school confirming a pupil falls into one of three exempted categories, the first being any pupil with difficulty breathing or any other relevant medical condition. The first question most people would ask would be what a relevant medical condition was. GPs are already operating beyond capacity, yet the Minister for Education stated on national radio that kids with glasses could get certificates of exemption.

We are all in agreement that no children should be penalised or have their education withheld. As difficult as Covid has been for us as adults over the past two years, the pressure, anxiety and stress it has placed on children are incalculable. As adults and legislators, we need to stop trying to force children to look at Covid as we do, that is, through adult eyes.

The Opposition, school communities and parents have raised concerns vocally about the safety of schools, but we were met with the constant mantra of "Schools are safe". The Government could not even stand over that statement because contact tracing had ceased.

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